THE IMAGINATION THIEF (mini-chapters 99-120)

117 That narrow door

"I was hoping to say goodbye to Rik just now, but leaving was such a rush," I say.

"You can say goodbye to him on the phone," she says. "He's up seeing Jason in New York today—give him a call. OK, so we're at Pippa's now because I still have a copy of her door key and I want to go up and check there's nothing major that she wouldn't want people finding, before all her stuff ends up god knows where—I don't even know if she has any relatives alive. I should have come here last night. Wanna join me?"

Alaia shakes her head. "No, I think I'll wait here. One visit there was enough for me."

"Sure, I'll come up," I say.

For the third and last time, therefore, I enter Pippa's dim, cluttered apartment, where the space is all wrong. Once we're inside, an unholy quiet prevails. Evelyn and I both seem to be walking on tiptoe, as if not to wake something. "I'll go look on the balcony," she whispers, heads up the hallway past the kitchen and pushes the sitting room door open.

Left alone, I glance down the long, narrow corridor in the other direction, towards Pippa's closed bedroom door, and am startled to notice a faint light gleaming through the hinge of that narrow door... I creep nearer to it, careful to make no sound. There's the keyhole. I bend down very slowly, bring my eye level with it, and peer through.

I recoil—for there it is. Exactly the figure Kim described: what looks like some kind of vegetable twin of Angel Deon, sitting naked in a wheelchair.

These eyes are quite different from the big, creepy, beautiful eyes on the waxwork on Damian's path, however. These are weasel eyes.

These eyes look like the eyes of a person.

At least, I think they do...

Can Pippa really have kept a person in her apartment, like this, for who knows how many weeks, or months, or years?

I start, as Evelyn comes bustling up behind me, proffering three keys on a key-ring. I put my finger to my lips, stand out of view of the keyhole, in front of the door itself, and gesture to her to remain where she is too, out of the figure's line of sight. I take the keys, peer at them, choose the likeliest-looking one and try it carefully in the hole. It's not a good fit. I pull it back out, bring the key-ring up to my face, compare the other two keys, select the next likely-looking one, and even more carefully try this in the keyhole: it goes in smoothly, but then will not turn. I shake my head, pull it back out, start to identify the third key, and jump nervily as Evelyn pokes me on the arm.

"Jaymi," she whispers stagily. "Maybe it's not locked..."

I think for a moment, hand her back the key-ring, half-look again through the keyhole, straighten up and start to turn the door handle, very slowly.

She's right! The door starts to open, by itself...

We stand there and let the door swing gradually inward under its own weight, making a teeth-grating squeak as it does so. Then, after a few centimetres, it comes to a halt. Through the crack, the wall of a toilet cubicle appears ... and the edge of a knee.

No one moves. There is silence and absolute stillness, for several seconds.

Evelyn and I glance at each other, horrified. Then I gesture to her to move back, brace myself grimly, and push the door firmly inward.

There the figure sits, bathed in the feeble off-white light of a hanging bulb. It has its right hand hidden from view, pushed in between its skinny pale-brown torso and its left upper arm, in a physically self-defensive pose that I recall is acutely characteristic of Angel. Its left hand is resting on its left knee.